Conventionally known is a teleconference system (also referred to as an electronic conference system) that is provided with a plurality of teleconference terminals each of which is capable of displaying a video of a space such as a conference room at a geographically remote location (hereinafter, sometimes referred to as a “location video”) and content such as information of a document shared among a plurality of locations across which an electronic conference is held (hereinafter, sometimes referred to as “shared information”), side by side on one screen (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-103499, for example).
However, in a conventional teleconference system, when a location video and shared information are displayed at fixed positions (for example, on the left side and the right side in a direction facing the display screen, respectively) among the different teleconference terminals participating the electronic conference, participants in the location video might be displayed on a teleconference terminal in a manner facing the opposite direction of the shared information displayed as well on the teleconference terminal. As a result, in such a conventional teleconference system, the participants in the location video might give an impression that they are not interested in the meeting to participants viewing the location video.
Such a situation can be prevented by allowing participants to manually switch the positions at which the shared information and the location video are displayed depending on the locations when such a situation occurs, but such a switching operation is cumbersome for the participants.
The present invention is to overcome such challenges in the conventional technology, and an object of the present invention is to provide a teleconference system and a teleconference terminal that can prevent participants in a location video from appearing to be looking at an awkward direction.